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Deidre Cusack of Dematic shares key lessons from business mentors, and how she sees automation and customer behavior evolving supply chain.

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Danny:

- Well hello and welcome to today's IndustrialSage Executive Series. I'm Danny Gonzales, and today I'm joined by Dee Cusack who is the chief technology officer at Dematic. Dee, thank you so much for joining me today on the Executive Series.

Dee:

- Happy to be here. Thanks for inviting me.

Danny:

- Well the pleasure's all mine here. I'm very excited. For the audience who's watching, we had a very lively pre-recorded discussion that we're going to wrap in, and I'm excited to get into it. For those who are unfamiliar with Dematic right now, who's Dematic, and what do you guys do?

Dee:

- Dematic is part of the KION Group. Dematic has actually been in existence for 203 years, and we are essentially the engine that goes behind ecommerce. We do supply chain automation, started in the early years with simple machines like conveyors and racking and so forth. Today we really are a very complex solution provider, full integrator in the supply chain automation space with obviously a big impact on software and robotics and all the latest technology. That's what we do.

Danny:

- Excellent. Well ecommerce has done nothing but absolutely exploded. It was a huge growth trend before this thing called Covid came along, but then certainly afterwards it's just been this massive explosion. I'm sure that we're going to get into some more of the insights and different things that are happening in the industry with that a little later on in the episode. Right now I would love to get to know a little bit more about you. I'd like to know more about Dee. Dee, tell me, how did you get into this space? Take me back. Is this something that you said, “Hey,” —maybe when you were a kid? “I want to go into supply chain; I want to get into the technology space.” How did this all come about?

Dee:

- I'd love to say that I had this vision when I was four, but that would be stretching it a little bit.

Danny:

- You were six. Okay, I got it.

Dee:

- No, but I started my career in R&D. I have a couple of engineering degrees, and I've always been interested in how to apply technology into markets, and particularly market niches to help a business grow in a rapid and profitable way. I started my career in R&D. I then went into business development, and then more on managing entire businesses, P&Ls that were global for a variety of different markets. I did that for about 20 years and decided to come back to my roots a little bit more. A friend of mine, a colleague of mine that I used to work with called me up and said, "Look, there's this wonderful company that I'm working with called Dematic; we'd love for you to come in and look at some of the opportunities." And so the opportunity to go and lead the technology in a meaningful way, particularly with the software that the company had and to really develop a strategy to help the company grow in a sustainable way but also bring our solutions to the next level was really compelling for me. As I started to learn more about the company and the industry, I started to get more and more excited about it. And just coincidentally, you said ecommerce exploding, I joined Dematic just about the time that the lockdown started with Covid. I can tell you, it's been an exciting ride, really trying to keep up with the pace of the market but also the changing demands in the marketplace since being part of Dematic. I just can't say enough good things about the industry, the company,

Pieter Krynauw shares his career history and how ThruWave is applying millimeter wave tech to save retailers millions in fraudulent returns.

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Danny:

- Well hello and welcome to today's IndustrialSage Executive Series interview. I'm Danny Gonzales, and today my guest is a company called ThruWave. I have Pieter Krynauw who is the CEO. We met at MODEX in 2022, and so I'm super excited to have you join me today, Pieter.

Pieter:

- Hey, thank you. Nice to be with you guys.

Danny:

- Well this is exciting. You guys have some really interesting technology. There's been several awards that you guys have won over the last several years. For those who aren't familiar with who you guys are, who ThruWave is, give me a little bit of a high-level of who you are and what you do.

Pieter:

- Yeah, sure. At a high level, we're a small start-up based in Seattle. We've just developed some amazing, ground-breaking millimeter wave ocular vision technology that can sense through cardboard, plastic, at very high speeds making it a great solution to inspect packages that move along a conveyor. We construct a 3D digital image of what's inside a cardboard box or a plastic tote providing the ability to verify quantity, condition, content for our supply chain customers. We use simple hardware technology like this, and then it's all software to analyze and support our customers.

Danny:

- Excellent. That's pretty cool. I remember we demoed it; I think we did some video content there. It seemed like it was very interesting technology. We'll get into that here in a little bit more in the episode, but right now we're going to pivot, go to one of my favorite sections just to learn a little bit more about you, Pieter. I want to learn about your background, how you got to where you are, hear your story a little bit. Take me back; how did you get into this space? Was it something that, did you go to school for engineering? What was that?

Pieter:

- Yeah, it's a long journey and a longer story. I grew up in South Africa. After college I moved to the UK, probably had a plane ticket and £100 in my pocket. Might've been a little bit more, but it didn't feel like a lot at the time. I had some software and computer networking training at the time. This being the late 90s, I was able to find a really nice job at a small data company in the UK, and I had the opportunity to work with just some fantastic customers, a wide variety of customers in the UK which was really fantastic for me as a young person, young professional. I returned to South Africa after about two years in the UK, did an MBA, and I was fortunate enough to get an opportunity with Honeywell. We had a large contract with South Africa's largest petrochemical company, so I jumped straight into the fire. I worked myself up, sideways, up again, into various positions in South Africa, the Middle East, China, and into the US working in a variety of roles, mostly in process automation, industrial process automation. Honeywell then acquired a material handling company a few years after I got to the US. I went over shortly after to lead that business. That's the short story of how I got into the supply chain space.

Danny:

- Excellent. Through that journey—obviously we got the short, we got the abridged version. Totally get it. I'm sure there's a lot of things that probably,

Jim Liefer of Ambi Robotics shares his view of prioritizing customer desires and workforce quality of life when implementing ai and robotics.

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Danny:

- Well hello and welcome to today's IndustrialSage Executive Series interview. I'm joined by Jim Liefer who is the CEO of Ambi Robotics. Jim, thank you so much for joining me today on the Executive Series.

Jim:

- Absolutely. Thanks for having me here, Danny.

Danny:

- Well I'm excited to jump into our episode, learn a little bit more about you. Learn a little bit more about Ambi. It sounds like you're a robotics company, based on the name. I'm just going out on a limb there.

Jim:

- We are an AI Robotics company. That is absolutely right.

Danny:

- So tell me a little bit about—what exactly are you guys doing? What are the problems that you're solving today?

Jim:

- Yeah, so Ambi Robotics is an AI Robotics company, as you guessed. We are developing solutions that empower people. Primarily we are in the world of supply chain at the moment, so we are enabling those humans to work smarter. If you think of it in the way of right now the work that they do out there in the parcel world, in that industry, and also in the fulfillment world for retail operations, they are moving packages and parcels around. Our technology allows them to become robot handlers instead of package handlers. That is what the technology does, and that is where our focus is today.

Danny:

- Excellent, alright. Well sounds good. Sounds like a lot of the companies that we've talked to, there has just been such a huge acceleration of automation, robotics technology to solve a lot of the challenges that are going on now that were honestly present before the pandemic, but certainly accelerated afterwards exponentially with the, you mentioned specifically in the parcel or warehousing. Ecommerce has exploded. Then there's nobody there. The labor has dropped.

Jim:

- Yeah, it's a couple of things. The way that I always think of this is that all of us consumers, we're on this path anyway of moving from brick-and-mortar shopping into ecommerce, going on our phone, having something arrive at our door basically. Then when the pandemic hit, it just accelerated that 5 or 10 years. I also, the way that I've seen this at least here at Ambi Robotics is that during that time where everyone was sort of in their bunker during the pandemic, there was a lot of progress made, a lot of progress made on the AI side, a lot of progress made around robotics and configurations. As you've said, Danny, there aren't humans anymore, so it created this moment where the customer sort of has to find this solution because we can't serve the need anymore. That's the journey through the pandemic as I see it.

Danny:

- Oh, sure, absolutely. I'm excited to jump into that a little bit more as we get a little bit later in the episode. Right now—it's one of my favorite parts. This is when I want to get to learn a little bit more about you. We get to learn more about Jim. Jim, so tell me. How did you get into this industry? How did you get into this space? Take me back.

Jim:

- Okay, well as you can see I have a few years on me, so we'll go way back.

Danny:

- You don't look any older than 25. Come on, man.

Jim:

- So I actually started as a computer operator for a bank. I also was mainframe systems operator, had the overnight shift. I was the sole operator, by the way, for this bank. I had this huge amount of responsibility on me to make sure that all the systems were working every day when the bank opened. Eventually I moved from that heavy set of responsibility into the...

Bob Kuniega of Lanco shares how the industry's lean practices wax and wane, and how manufacturers need to improve their recruiting methods.

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Danny:

- Hello and welcome to today's IndustrialSage Executive Series interview. I am joined by the president and CEO of Lanco Integrated, Bob Kuniega. Bob, thank you so much for joining me today on the Executive Series.

Bob:

- Very welcome, Danny. I'm glad to be here.

Danny:

- Alright, well I'm glad to interview you. We met, we were at the ASSEMBLY Show. We were talking about this before, in Chicago in 2021. My dates are all—with all the Covid stuff, time has just gotten all messed up. But yeah, it was the ASSEMBLY Show in Chicago. I think we met you guys there. You guys have some pretty cool technology and solutions. I think you guys were showcasing a solution with a partnership you had with I think Stäubli at that point. And so anyways, caught our interest, started talking, and here we are. For those who aren't familiar with Lanco, could you just give me a quick high-level of who you guys are and what you do?

Bob:

- Sure, great. So Lanco, we make custom automated assembly and test machines really for the assembly and the testing of small to medium parts. Been around over 35 years; we have over 8000 machines stationed around the world. What we do is we work typically with an end customer who has a product and wants to get it to market and wants to automate the assembly end or test processes. We're doing the concept. We're doing the design. We're doing the build and then the eventual validation and certification and tests that the product is meeting form, fit, and function. We typically, because of the size of the products we handle and the expense of our solutions, we're focused in on a couple markets. It's medical; it's consumer electronics, automotive, some commercial industrial so a lot of these specialty applications that can warrant the complexity and the cost of these automated systems.

Danny:

- Sure, absolutely, okay. Well I'm sure that you guys have experienced quite of—like a lot of companies in this space, in the automation space, just quite a huge boom relative to Covid. I know there was a lot of, the industries were moving towards a lot of automation anyways, but certainly basically gas got thrown on that fire.

Bob:

- Yeah, absolutely right. Covid, while it was an unfortunate thing for the world, it was a boost and a refocusing, I would say to our business. We were fortunate early on to build a number of very rapid solutions for Covid test card kits, so more the self, home versions. That really shifted our market segmentation and what we're working on. But as a result of that and as a result of supply chain disruptions and rebalancing, especially in this market in the Americas, you've got a lot of manufacturers who have decided they're not going to go to a low-cost country and then have that disruption, so they're forced to build local to their customers. But then depending where you're at, probably now anywhere in the world, it's tough to get people, and it's expensive to get people. That whole shift, that was the gasoline that put on the whole industry. And in general our end users have really lost this ability to do the integration themselves, so they're looking for us and our partners, our manufacturing partners to put it together and give them the solution they want in the end, which is produce their product to serve their customers.

Danny:

- Yeah, totally makes sense. That's a story that we've seen and we've heard play out constantly. What's interesting, too, is as things shift,

Michael Giagnacova of CHL Systems shares on building relationships in business; and seeing challenges as new opportunities.

 



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Danny:

- Well hello and welcome to the IndustrialSage Executive Series. I am joined by Mike Giagnacova, the CEO for CHL Systems. Mike, thank you so much for joining me today on the Executive Series.

Mike:

- Oh, thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

Danny:

- Alright, well I'm excited to get into today's episode. For those who aren't familiar with CHL Systems, could you give me a high-level, like who you guys are and what you do?

Mike:

- Yeah, so we design and build solutions that move, make, and pack the products that feed our country. That's the short clip of what we're involved with.

Danny:

- Excellent, alright, well I'm excited to get into that a little bit more as I suspect you guys—there's a lot that’s been going on in that industry. We talk about food and packaging and just moving all that, so a lot of things that have been going on. But before we get into all of that, this is one of my favorite parts of the episode where we get to learn more about you. We get to learn about Mike. So Mike, tell me; take me back. How did you get into this industry? How did you get into this space?

Mike:

- Yeah, so I was kind of born into it. My father owned a company that designed and built custom machinery, one-off machines. You would come to us; you would have a need for something that you'd have to custom design and build. So at a young age I started working as a machinist, working for my dad in that industry. Then I went to night school, Drexel University, for industrial engineering and worked during the day for my father. Then when I graduated there, I went to the University of Pennsylvania. We are just outside of Philadelphia. The Wharton School had a management program, so I took that. I went through that, that application. Then from there, worked in various manufacturing jobs learning how to make products, learning how to market and sell them. Those early days of being a machinist really have, I've carried them all the way through my career. Understanding manufacturing has been a huge part of my career.

Danny:

- Yeah, absolutely. What I think is interesting is that you said your dad owned that business, right? He was creating machines, and you’ve got a lot of, I'm guessing, some entrepreneurial genes or certainly some learnings from seeing your father doing that. Talk to me a little bit about that. Is that accurate?

Mike:

- Yeah, it's pretty accurate. My dad was—he's still alive—a true inventor, a great engineer. He went to Drexel as well, so we have a family history of Drexel grads. He was a true inventor of custom technology. You just couldn't help but be a part of that. That's who we were, and so some of the technology that we would use was cutting-edge. No challenge was too big, so to your entrepreneurial thing. The greater the challenge, the more exciting it was. And so yeah, I have a piece of that in me, too; not as much as my dad, but enough to get me into trouble.

Danny:

- Yeah, that's always the rub right there. Enough to get you into trouble. Well let's talk about some of that trouble. What trouble has that gotten you into?

Mike:

- Yeah, so I'm 59. I've been in this industry since I was a teenager, and been in different management positions pretty much all my life. There's a lot of learning. You're dealing with a lot of people. How you work with people, how you learn from them, there's always an experience to learn. It builds who you are.

Hear from Vince Martinelli of RightHand Robotics about his career journey, from coffeeshop management to startups and warehouse robotics.

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Danny:

- Hello and welcome to the IndustrialSage Executive Series. I'm joined by Vince Martinelli who is the head of product and marketing for RightHand Robotics. Vince, thank you so much for joining me today on the Executive Series.

Vince:

- Yes, thank you Danny. Nice to talk to you.

Danny:

- Well I'm excited to jump into this conversation. I don't think that we've had you on the show before. I know that we were talking about it a little bit before how I think we did a quick interview at MODEX in 2020, and I think you guys were part of that. That was fantastic. But first time on the Executive Series, so we're excited.

Vince:

- Yes, thank you.

Danny:

- Before we jump into learning about you which is one of my favorite parts, if you could give me just a high-level on RightHand Robotics, who you guys are, what you guys do.

Vince:

- Yeah, so RightHand Robotics builds what we call a data-driven, intelligent picking platform for predictable order fulfillment. Now let me break that down just a little simpler, everyday language. Simply, it's a configurable autonomous picking machine, and it can move individual products in a warehouse such as from an inventory tote. It might be coming from an ASRS-type system like AutoStore into an outbound order or a box. At that junction between the inventory storage system and picking the products flowing out of the building, the robot can move items. One thing that's cool about that is an ecomm facility may have 50,000, 100,000, a million different products. Enabling a robot to pick and handle all those different things reliably is the secret sauce of what we do.

Danny:

- Wow, that's awesome. It's fantastic and super needed, obviously right now with ecomm growing exponentially, solving the big labor challenges, all kinds of stuff that I'm sure we're going to get into. But before we do that, I want to—this is the part of the show where we get to learn more about you, and really this is one of my favorite parts. Tell me, how did you start your career journey? How did you get into this space? Were you always in robotics, in product or marketing? Tell me how things started.

Vince:

- Yeah, so coming out of college, my background's in materials science, really semiconductor physics and so on. I got out of MIT, and I go into a semiconductor industry for different things. I learned a lot about designing of complex processor systems. Flash-forward another, I don't know, key moment years later—well first off, I switched from R&D side of the world to business side and product and sales and some marketing and all these things when I joined Corning and got into the fiber optics business. Again, my interest there was more about the material science of the glass and how you make these things, and it was all cool. To cross over and work there, I kind of grudgingly took a job on the business side.

Danny:

- Oh, you went to the dark side.

Vince:

- Yeah, on the dark side, exactly. That's the phrase. Found out I really liked it because there's a part of communicating to people how that technology works and what you can do with it that I found I had some ability to take these complex things, talk to the PhD guys in the research lab, translate it into ideas and things that customers could gravitate to. There I worked on new products, so one thing that's been consistent throughout my whole career is I'm always working on new products. While fiber optics was used for telecomm,